Amazon has resumed drone deliveries in two locations of the United States this week, after pausing flight operations a few months ago.

CNBC reported that Amazon has resumed Prime Air deliveries in both Texas and Arizona, after it diagnosed a problem with a new drone model.

It was in January 2025 when the e-commerce giant had halted its Prime Air deliveries in College Station, Texas, and Tolleson, Arizona, the two US markets where it is currently testing the service.

Prime Air

Prime Air drone deliveries had first launched back in December 2022 in the West Valley Phoenix Metro Area of Arizona and College Station, Texas.

In 2024, Amazon had halted drone deliveries in California.

The January suspension of the service reportedly came after two of Amazon’s new and lighter MK30 drones had crashed in December at the Pendleton, Oregon airport it uses for testing.

One of the drones reportedly caught fire after it fell to earth – which if the report at the time was accurate, could have proved to be a serious liability issue for Amazon if it happened at a customer’s location.

Amazon’s MK30 drone had already undertaken an aerospace design and verification process, and the machine can travel two times farther than Amazon’s previous drones, and is significantly quieter (noise can be an issue for drone flying over crowded neighbourhoods).

Now CNBC has reported that Amazon has rolled out a software update to its drone fleet, after it discovered an abnormality with the drone’s altitude sensor, caused by dust in the air, that could have caused its system to produce an inaccurate reading of its position relative to the ground.

Amazon said it “never experienced an actual safety issue,” but said it opted to suspend deliveries while it corrected the issue.

FAA approval

Amazon reportedly brought drone deliveries back online last week after it completed the software update and received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, Amazon spokesperson Av Zammit told CNBC in a statement.

“Safety underscores everything we do at Prime Air, which is why we paused our operations to conduct a software update on the MK30 drone,” Zammit said. “The updates are now complete and were approved by the FAA, allowing us to resume deliveries.”

An FAA spokesperson didn’t immediately provide a comment, CNBC noted.

Amazon has reportedly set a goal to deliver 500 million packages by drone per year by the end of the decade.

Long development

The concept of drone deliveries has been under development at Amazon for over a decade now.

Indeed, Amazon began plotting to use drones for deliveries, ever since first mooting the idea back in 2013.

The plan was that drones could deliver packages weighing up to 2.3 kilograms.

Amazon at one stage also patented the idea of a floating mothership retail hub (a warehouse in the sky) for drone deliveries.

Amazon has also already tested drone deliveries in the United Kingdom.

This occurred when Amazon began testing its delivery drone service in Cambridge back in July 2016 – a package was delivered, by drone, in just 13 minutes.

International deliveries

Now nearly a decade later, it seems that Amazon intends to expand its drone delivery service into the United Kingdom and Italy.

In August 2024 the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) had selected Amazon (and others) to conduct UK trials of drone deliveries to remote locations, as well for inspections of infrastructure and emergency services.

In December 2024 Amazon said it had successfully completed an initial test of using delivery drones in Italy in San Salvo – a town in the central Abruzzo region.

It is understood that Italy is to be the first European country where the e-commerce giant plans to introduce the service.

The company had previously said it hoped to start using drones in Italy and in Britain in late 2024.